[plt-scheme] [ann] Riverbot -- beta testers needed

Hello PLT friends,

I'm pleased to announce the availability of a new application written in PLT 
Scheme.

About Riverbot
==============

Riverbot is an online river gage information retrieval and subscription 
service for whitewater boaters with coverage of the continental United States.

There are several public data sources that provide real-time river gage 
readings via satellite uplink including the US Geological Survey and the US 
Army Corps of Engineers.  However these sources provide many sites that are 
not of interest to the whitewater boater community, and for the sites that are 
of interest, much too much information is provided than is needed by a boater. 
  Further, the USGS and USACE web interfaces are difficult to use.

Riverbot seeks to provide easy to use, real-time gage readings for those 
choice locations important to the boater community, giving only the subset of 
information that is needed by boaters, such as the height (feet), stream flow 
(cubic feet), and long term median flow at each gage.

Riverbot also provides a subscription service that allows boaters to select 
locations they're interested in.  Boaters can receive daily emails reporting 
the conditions, or they can bookmark these reports online and check for 
updates throughout the day (w/o logging in).

Riverbot was originally written 6 years ago by Professor Christian Skalka 
while attending the Johns Hopkins University to service the mid-atlantic 
region (~60 sites).  There are currently around 600 users.

The new implementation extends coverage to the continental US (~750 sites), 
enhances the user interface and services, and provides a number of 
administrative tools for use by the Riverbot maintainers.


Testers Needed
==============

We're at the point now where we want to give the system a serious beta 
testing.  For the duration of the beta testing period, the PLT web-server 
hosting Riverbot can be found at:

    http://edora.emba.uvm.edu:23235/

After testing we will move the site to the following address (which currently 
houses the older Riverbot implementation):

    http://riverbot.com/

We would greatly appreciate it if you'd be willing to check out the new site, 
sign up for a user account, etc., and let us know if you find bugs, don't 
understand how to use a feature, have suggestions for improvements, and so forth.

Please send any comments to my email address: dvanhorn at cs.uvm.edu


Many Thanks
===========

I'd like to thank the PLT group and extended family for their great software 
and support.  In particular I'd like to thank Paul Graunke for his extensive 
comments that helped secure a PLT web server at UVM; all those whose code I've 
relied heavily upon in writing Riverbot, including but certainly not limited 
to: John Clements, Robby Findler, Bruce Hauman, Peter Walton Hopkins, Jacob 
Matthews, Greg Pettyjohn and Jens Axel Søgaard; the Schematics folks for their 
high quality SRFI implementations; and Shriram Krishnamurthi for his 
friendship and generous support of my work these past few years.  Finally, I'd 
like to thank my mother, for her compassion and great waffles.

See you at NEPLS!

Thanks,
David